Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has told Vladimir Putin that his country can play a facilitator role regarding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, according to his office.
An eight-year-old child has died after Russian shelling in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv this morning, according to the head of the regional council, Hanna Zamazeyeva. Two other children were among those injured in Russian shelling in the city of Mykolaiv and Bereznehuvate, she said in an update on Telegram.
Russian troops launched overnight rocket attacks on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to the governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, has reportedly said he plans to take an “indefinite and long” break from his post. In a video posted to his Telegram, Kadyrov, 45, reportedly said he believed the “time has come” for him to leave.
The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has accused the west of playing a “chess game with death” in its support of Ukraine and accused western countries of trying to take advantage of the conflict to push Russia to “a new round of disintegration”.
Ukrainian forces have “likely achieved a degree of tactical surprise” with the ongoing counter-offensive, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said. In its daily intelligence briefing, it said it had done so by taking advantage of “poor logistics, administration and leadership” in Russia’s military.
Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has said in a BBC interview that while the economic impact of the war in Ukraine is tough on its allies, Britons “count pennies” while Ukrainians “count casualties”.